to reason that
sometimes you let a hoss go all on the square--as you know him--an' the
feller that gits him don't know how to hitch him or treat him, an' he
acts like a diff'rent hoss, an' the feller allows you swindled him. You
see, hosses gits used to places an' ways to a certain extent, an' when
they're changed, why they're apt to act diff'rent. Hosses don't know but
dreadful little, really. Talk about hoss sense--wa'al, the' ain't no
such thing."

Thus spoke David on the subject of his favorite pursuit and pastime, and
John thought then that he could understand and condone some things he
had seen and heard, at which at first he was inclined to look askance.
But this matter of the Widow Cullom's was a different thing, and as he
realized that he was expected to play a part, though a small one, in it,
his heart sank within him that he had so far cast his fortunes upon the
good will of a man who could plan and carry out so heartless and cruel
an undertaking as that which had been revealed to him that afternoon. He
spent the evening in his room trying to read, but the widow's affairs
persistently thrust themselves upon his thoughts. All the unpleasant
stories he had heard of David came to his mind, and he remembered with
misgiving some things which at the time had seemed regular and right
enough, but which took on a different color in the light in which he
found himself recalling them. He debated with himself whether he should
not decline to send Mrs. Cullom the notice as he had been instructed,
and left it an open question when he went to bed.

He wakened somewhat earlier than usual to find that the thermometer had
gone up, and the barometer down. The air was full of a steady downpour,
half snow, half rain, about the most disheartening combination which the
worst climate in the world--that of central New York--can furnish. He
passed rather a busy day in the office in an atmosphere redolent of the
unsavory odors raised by the proximity of wet boots and garments to the
big cylinder stove outside the counter, a compound of stale smells from
kitchen and stable.

After the bank closed he dispatched Peleg Hopkins, the office boy, with
the note for Mrs. Cullom. He had abandoned his half-formed intention to
revolt, but had made the note not only as little peremptory as was
compatible with a clear intimation of its purport as he understood it,
but had yielded to a natural impulse in beginning it with an expression
of personal